The morning light filtered through the high, narrow windows of the cloisters in stretched, sickly shafts of grey, illuminating dust motes that danced like tiny, panicked ghosts in the damp air. The castle felt like a lung holding its breath, the stone walls sweating with the collective anxiety of a thousand students.
The fragile optimism that had started the week had been incinerated. The Equinox Social was supposed to be the turning point toward safety; instead, it had descended into a riot of Inks against Vapours and the arrival of the Red Letters.
Gwen walked beside Sloan, her loafers trudging a hollow rhythm against the stone. In the pocket of her beige-tartan blazer, her copy of the Red Letter felt like a hearth-charred coal. The hobgoblins had cleared the heaps of letters and soot from the fireplaces by dawn, but the damage was done. Every student now carried that word—purge—like an irreversible poison.
Gwen’s mind was a hive of buzzing possibilities. From the moment she woke from her restless sleep, she’d viewed the letter as a puzzle locked in her thoughts, obsessing over the physical evidence. She needed to find a flaw, a sign of a forgery, proof it was a prank gone too far.
But the evidence felt damning. The paper wasn’t standard; it was heavy, cream-laid vellum with a faint, iridescent sheen—the kind only accessible to council members of the Aurelius Circle.
The sharp, aggressive slant of the Ls and the way the T crossed like a duellist’s parry were agonizingly familiar. She couldn’t be sure who had authored the cruel letter, but the insistent buzz of her intuition told her someone on the Council wrote it.
Worst of all was the blind-debossed mark in the bottom right corner. The Ouroboros. A tiny dragon devouring its own tail, etched with a precision that mocked her. The gold pin on Gwen’s lapel felt agonizingly heavy, an exact mirror of the mark on the threat.
“It’s a frame job,” Gwen murmured, the words feeling brittle in her mouth. “Someone stole the paper stock. No one in the Circle would…”
Sloan’s silence was its own kind of weight. She looked at a group of second-year Newbloods huddled near a laughing gargoyle. The accusatory glares they aimed at the pins Gwen and Sloan wore instantly knotted her stomach. A flush of heat spread from Gwen’s neck to her face. She thought of Will—his warning that the Circle’s noble foundations had rotted into something unrecognizable.
“The Aurelian Circle protects this institution,” Gwen said, her voice dropping to a desperate whisper intended for herself. “We have to fix this. I have to.”
Sloan, aware of Gwen’s near unravelling, chose to distract her. “I’m thinking total boycott,” she said with a forced, brittle cheerfulness. Her cropped ivory cardigan was open, revealing a delicate, sheer lace top in pale cream, with flowery, layered ruffles that shivered with every agitated step she took.
“Clearly, Ink and Vapour isn’t a blend the school can handle,” she said. “So, we divide. Separate parties. An Ink-only Yule. A Vapour-Only Yule. And… I guess Newbloods can…I don’t know, pick a side? Toss a coin?”
Gwen barely heard her. She was thinking of the rhyme in the letter—a twisting of the Circle’s First Law: The black ink of the oth outlasts the clear water of the well. To Gwen, that rule was a sacred oath of protection. Seeing it used as a battle cry for a massacre was a desecration that made her blood run cold.
Sloan wasn’t the only one who thought the Inks and Vapours couldn’t mix. Gwen stopped mid-step, Professor Blackwood’s forlorn portrait staring back at her. He was Cairn-Gait’s first and only Newblood chancellor. Before his time, Inks and Newbloods and Vapours all took separate classes.
“Separate parties—did you just suggest segregation?” Gwen asked, stunned. Blackwood’s portrait scowled, looking between Gwen and Sloan, deeply disappointed by their conclusion.
Sloan’s eyes shot wide, her poise finally fracturing. “No, I didn’t mean—crap. Crap. That’s a different coloured disaster.” She groaned, backing up until she hit the cold stone wall. “How are we only one month into our ‘glorious rise’ and everything is sucking this bad?”
Gwen sighed. She leaned against the wall beside Sloan, the Ice Princess armour feeling thin.
Everything did suck.
“And what are you going to say at the emergency Circle meeting?” Sloan asked, bumping Gwen’s shoulder. The sheer, ruffled lace of her sleeve caught on Gwen’s blazer, tethering them together for a brief, messy second. “Noon doesn’t give you a lot of time to plot. Alistair is going to want a plan. You need to be ready to lay the blame exactly where it belongs.”
Gwen felt a wave of nausea. Her brain was a chaotic collage of Ouroboros imprints, duellist parry Ts, and distrustful gazes. If she told the Circle about her suspicions, she’d be accusing one of her own. If she stayed silent, she was complicit in an attempt to incite violence.
“I… I’m not sure yet,” she managed to say, her fingers tightening around the letter.
Sloan narrowed her eyes. “Don’t go soft now, Gwennie. Legacy doesn’t survive on doubt.”
Gwen stretched her fingers away from the letter in her blazer pocket. Sloan was right. She needed to make a decision. Before the meeting.
“Well, look at the state of them,” Sloan sneered, gesturing ahead.
Near the entrance to the Arcanum classroom, Will, Cal, and Bryn were standing by a stone gargoyle. Bryn looked miserable, her nose bright red as she let out a loud, wet sneeze. Cal was muttering an incantation, his hands glowing with a soft orange light as he tried to cast a warming spell on Bryn’s scarf. Suddenly, a spark jumped too far, and the edge of the wool ignited into a small, sputtering flame.
“Whoa! Easy!” Will shouted, helping Bryn pat out the fire.
Bryn didn’t look angry; she actually laughed, a raspy, congested sound. “At least I was warm for a second, Cal. Thanks for trying.”
Sloan let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Gawd, it’s like watching a circus act. Whitley is still proving he belongs exactly where he is—fumbling basic heat charms. At least I’m not the only one who should be embarrassed today.”
Gwen’s gaze locked onto Will. He looked up, the sharp morning light catching the stubborn angle of his jaw, and for a heartbeat, she braced for the usual friction—the electric spark of defiance or that frustrating, unnameable warmth that always seemed to simmer between them.
But today, his eyes were flat, green depths turned to cold sea glass. He looked through her, dismissing her as if she were merely another piece of weathered gothic masonry. The sting of his indifference was sharper than any insult.
***
The morning crawled by in a blur of sepia-toned lectures and the scratching of pens on paper. Throughout Advanced Arcanum and Introduction to Runes, Gwen sat like a relic of her own lineage—perfectly still, perfectly poised, while a storm of cognitive dissonance raged beneath inside her skull.
Sloan’s question from that morning—“What are you going to say at the emergency Circle meeting?”—clung to Gwen like the scent of old incense. It wasn’t just a question; it was a demand for fealty. Every time Gwen tried to focus on the professor’s lecture, her mind drifted back to the Red Letters and the terrifyingly familiar slant of the handwriting.
By the time Gwen entered the Circle’s private council chamber, the atmosphere was as heavy as a funeral parlour. Ancient, dark-stained oak panelled the walls, and a fire crackled in a hearth carved with the likeness of roaring dragons. At the centre sat the massive ebony table, a monolith that had borne the weight of a thousand years of debates and decrees.
Gwen took her seat, feeling like a marble statue—cold, flawed, and ready to crumble into powder if the pressure shifted by a single degree.
Alistair Thorne sat at the head of the table, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. To his right, Isolde Thorne watched Gwen with the expectant, selfish pride of a mentor waiting for her star pupil to perform. Across the table, Sloan’s eyes were wide and urgent, silently begging Gwen to deliver the killing blow to the Vapours’ reputation to save herself. Catriona Sinclair looked on with bored skepticism, fidgeting with her iron drop pendant, while Tristan and Clooney—the Membership Chair—wore expressions of genuine concern that made Gwen’s stomach twist.
“No point hesitating. Let’s start,” Alistair said, his voice a smooth, silken baritone. His own iron pendant—like an aged marble—still hung tightly from his Ouroboros pin. “The Equinox Social was a debacle. A stain on the Circle’s stewardship. The question now lies with our Community Service Chair.” He turned his gaze to Gwen. “What does Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe plan to do about the Vapours who disturbed the sanctity of the night?”
Gwen’s stomach flipped. She looked down at the table, her eyes falling on the name card set before her seat. It was written in the large, looping letters of the Circle’s secretary. Then, her gaze drifted to Isolde, who was finishing a line of notes with that unmistakable, slanted ‘T’—a duellist’s parry in ink.
Her mind raced, comparing the handwriting to the Red Letter burning in her pocket. She wasn’t a forensic analyst, but she was a hunter of details. The paper stock alone—that heavy, cream-laid vellum—was only available to the people in this very room. And that Ouroboros imprint? It wasn’t just a symbol; it was a fingerprint of the Ink elite.
If she was right, the Red Letters weren’t a random act of Ink extremism; they were a rot spread from the heart of the Aurelius Circle. The betrayal tasted like copper in her mouth. She didn’t know which of them had held the pen, but she knew the order had irrevocably shamed the Circle. The only cure for a rot so deep was to rip it out by the roots, pruning until nothing was left to spread again. It was the only way to save it.
Gwen felt the marble of her composure crack, but beneath it, something hotter and more dangerous began to flow. Magma bleeding through once-unchangeable ground irrevocably altered by a tectonic shift. Be the one who breaks the cycle, Will had said. How could she refuse a chance to make history?
She looked up, her gaze steady and lethal. She’d decided.
“The disruption at the Equinox was a violation of school protocol,” Gwen began, her voice gaining a sharp, crystalline edge. “However, it was not the only violation. The Red Letters appearing in the dormitories are an even graver breach. It was an Ink-orchestrated threat to the school’s stability and safety.”
A ripple of genuine shock went around the table.
“Surely, Gwenhwyfar,” Catriona said, her voice wavering, “those letters were a heated response. A prank by some overzealous Inks.”
“A harmless distraction,” Isolde added, her voice dropping into a register of sharp warning. Her hand hovered over the tiny, iron pendant hanging from her silver choker chain before she seemed to catch herself, hiding her hands beneath the table. “We should focus on the Vapours who actually instigated the physical disorderly conduct.”
“I disagree,” the Treasurer, Sean Thomas, spoke up, his brow furrowed.
“Same,” Clooney spoke up, his dark brow furrowed as he looked at Gwen, then at Isolde. “The Equinox riot was rough, but it was spur-of-the-moment. That’s nothing compared to mass-produced magical letters invading common rooms. This Council is a joke if we don’t condemn that. Ignoring it just because an Ink did it? We aren’t protecting Cairn-Gait’s legacy—we’re letting it rot from the inside.”
“Half the students hate the Circle today,” Sloan agreed timidly, picking at her cuticles as an excuse to keep her head down. “The official message boards are a mess of anti-Circle comments. Our moderators can’t keep up.”
Alistair’s amused expression faltered. He recognized the shift in the room, felt the sway toward Gwen’s logic. He was a politician first; he knew when to compromise to save the larger play.
“The Circle shall authorize an investigation,” Alistair said, his eyes narrowing as he fixed Gwen with a look that promised a later reckoning. “You are charged with this task, Gwenhwyfar. Find the source of the letters to restore the student body’s trust in the Circle. Do what is right for the legacy of Cairn-Gait.”
What is right for the legacy, he had said. But his eyes said: Protect the Circle. Protect your own. Gwen gathered her things, her heart a steady drumbeat. She didn’t care about protecting a tainted Circle. She knew the legacy by heart, and she would hunt down the traitor who abused its words.
***
Gwen left the council chamber feeling lighter, yet more precarious than a glass vase on the edge of a marble mantle. By the time the afternoon sun was casting long, skeletal shadows through the cloisters, she found herself walking toward Linguistics of Power.
The trio was ahead of her. Even from a distance, she could pick Will out—the stubborn, broad set of his shoulders under that off-the-rack fleece hoodie, the way he moved with a grounded, unpretentious grace that made her heart give an agonizing thud. He was still deliberately ignoring her, a cold wall of indifference that felt like a personal insult.
She was going to break that wall. If Will Clark was going to be mad at her, fine. But he would be mad at the truth, not the hollow caricature of an Ice Princess he’d constructed in her absence.
“You go in without me, Sloan,” Gwen said, her voice like clipped silver. “I need to… Discuss Clark’s progress with his Aegis Bastion.”
Sloan adjusted her ivory cardigan, her expression a mask of predatory elegance. “Don’t linger, Gwen. Being late is a bad look. And after last night, we can’t afford any more mistakes.”
Gwen marched toward the trio. Cal Whitley saw her coming first. He shifted, his broad shoulders tensing under his worn bomber jacket like a wolf guarding the pack.
“Come to see if we remember our place, O’Dorchaidhe?” Cal’s voice was a low, bitter rasp. “Or are you bored looking down on commoners after a morning spent in your ivory tower?”
“I realize the view is quite different from the gutter, Whitley, but some of us have more interesting things to do than look down on people. You should try it sometime,” Gwen snapped, only briefly glancing at him and his too-tight hand-me-downs. Likely from a slighter-built older brother. She quickly fixed her gaze on Will. “Ignoring me isn’t the best way to get my attention, Clark. If you have something to say about my handling of the Equinox—”
“I think the silence speaks for itself, Princess,” Will said. He didn’t look at her. His voice was flat, utterly devoid of the warmth that had sparked between them before the riot. The dismissiveness stung worse than any of Cal’s insults—it was a blunt, crushing blow.
“They were just being honest,” Cal interrupted, stepping between them. “The Inks treat everyone like rubbish. Until they need someone to do the heavy lifting. Then suddenly it’s all ‘school spirit’ and ‘tradition.’”
“You should bring your concerns to your Dorm Leaders,” Gwen said stiffly, her jaw tightening. “It’s their job to communicate. It’s not my fault your invitations were… Delayed.”
“Delayed?” Cal let out a short, mocking bark of laughter. “We know we aren’t welcome, O’Dorchaidhe. You don’t have to play the dishonest diplomat. We’re used to being ignored.”
“I will pass on to the Events Chair that communication was insufficient,” Gwen said, shoving a firm lid over her simmering indignity. She hated that they were right. She hated that she had been part of the system that expected their exclusion. “It will be remedied by the next official event.”
“Oh, brilliant,” Cal groaned, rolling his eyes. “Another night of being stared at like a zoo exhibit. Can’t wait.”
“What about the Red Letters?” Bryn asked, her voice small but steady.
Gwen stiffened. “That is under investigation.”
“You mean swept under the rug,” Cal shot back. “Let me guess—the Circle found that the Inks are all innocent little lambs and it was actually the Vapours who mailed threats to themselves?”
“I said under investigation, Whitley,” Gwen corrected through a tight, pained smile. “Or do I need to repeat myself in simpler words? I know your vocabulary is largely restricted to sports metaphors and complaints.”
Cal stepped forward, but Will raised an arm to block him. Will finally looked at her, his eyes still like frosted sea glass. The disappointment in his gaze made Gwen want to flinch.
“You can stop being an arrogant ass,” Will said, his voice quiet and dangerously calm. “Everyone knows the Circle doesn’t care. Because it’s obvious one of your own did it. You’re just here to protect the brand.”
Gwen felt the eyes of the entire corridor on her. Her silver signet ring felt like a lead weight. Her heart a pulsing heaviness submerged in molasses. She shouldn’t do this. It was tactical suicide. But the urge to prove herself to him—to prove she wasn’t heartless—was an itch she couldn’t stop scratching.
She stepped directly into Will’s personal space, ignoring the way he tried to shoulder past her. She caught his arm, her fingers digging into the rough fleece of his sleeve.
“I care about the letters,” she whispered, the words barely a breath, her grey eyes searching his with a desperate, burning clarity. “And I swear on the O’Dorchaidhe name, the person who did it is not getting away with it.”
Will froze. The indifference cracked, replaced by a sharp, guarded intensity. He looked at her, searching for the lie, but found only the fierce, refined edge of her resolve. He glanced sideways at Cal and Bryn, his jaw working.
“Don’t let her play you, Will,” Cal warned.
“Will, class starts in ten minutes,” Bryn said, her wide eyes darting toward the heavy oak doors of the lecture hall.
“Go on,” Will said, his voice low. He gave Cal’s shoulder a dismissive nudge. “I’ll be right there.”
Bryn and Cal exchanged a wary look before moving toward the lecture hall. The second they were gone, Gwen gripped the strap of Will’s bag and pulled him toward a deep, recessed archway draped in skeletal ivy. She shoved him into the shadows, the air smelling of damp moss.
“It’s a little late, Gwen,” Will said, his voice a low, bitter rasp. “The letters already did their work. Some Vapours are too scared to leave their rooms, and the rest are looking for a fight. You must be so proud.”
“It was an Ink,” Gwen hissed, her voice trembling. “Worse. It was a Circle member.”
Will’s eyes widened, his gaze searching hers in the gloom. “You’re sure?”
“Listen to me first,” Gwen demanded. She reached out to touch his shoulder, but she pulled her hand back, crossing her arms to mimic his defensive posture. “I… regret last night. I hate that I didn’t see the trap. It’s obvious now—it wasn’t spur-of-the-moment outrage. It was designed to give a Circle-member the excuse to send those letters—and for more Inks to think the letters were right.”
Will stared at her, the silence heavy with the scent of Highland rain. His expression softened, the sea glass warming. “You’re actually admitting a mistake? I thought an O’Dorchaidhe would rather die than admit they weren’t perfect.”
“I’m not the icy monster you’ve cast me as, Will,” she whispered, stepping closer until the heat from his body was a physical taunt. “I have a legacy to uphold, yes. But I will not be a puppet for a purge. That isn’t excellence—it’s cowardice.”
Will exhaled a long, slow breath, his head thumping back against the cold, weathered stone and ivy. He watched her for a moment with a weary sort of recognition.
“I was… Disappointed, Gwen. I really was,” he said quietly. His gaze was pulled by the bustling hallway, the last rush of students entering classrooms. “I thought… Maybe I saw something in you that wasn’t there. Because I know what it’s like when the world decides who you are before you even wake up.” He looked at her lips, then snapped his gaze back to hers. “I just wish you’d stand up for what you actually believe, not the rot the Circle is feeding you.”
“The Circle isn’t wrong!” she snapped, the instinctive defence of her life’s work jumping to her lips. She saw him recoil and felt an immediate, biting sliver of regret. “I mean… the ideal of it isn’t. Protection. The preservation of magic. Caring about magic. I won’t let some zealot corrupt what our legacy is supposed to be.”
Will looked at her warily. He wanted to burn the whole system down; she wanted to excise the rot to save the heart.
“I want things to be better,” she said. “For everyone. Cairn-Gait deserves a better Circle. And that would be easier with… If we call a truce.”
Will stayed silent for a heartbeat, his gaze roaming her face with an intensity that made her feel stripped bare. “Why do you care what I think?” he asked.
The question stunned her with the heat of a lightning strike. A flush spiked up her neck, blooming a blotchy pink in her cheeks. She didn’t have an answer—at least, not one she was brave enough to voice.
She gathered her platinum hair over her shoulder to hide the heat in her face, her fingers trembling as she brushed them through the strands. She looked everywhere but at him—at the ivy, the stone, the pooling shadows—feeling like a complete fool.
“It’s hard to say no to you,” he said, his voice dropping into a register that made her knees weak.
Her hand froze in her hair. The shadow of him fell over her as he straightened, closing the distance between them to the span of a breath. His green eyes were fixed on her silver signet ring, his expression pained, as if the etched ‘O’ around the black tourmaline was responsible for the distance between their worlds.
“Fine. A truce,” he agreed.
Gwen let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her heart squeezed with a strange, giddy relief.
“But you turn them in,” Will said, his eyes tightening, the obsidian lines on his neck pulsing with the force of his conviction. “No backroom deals. No protecting your own.”
“I will,” she said, her voice hardening. Turning in a Circle member might be social suicide, but shielding a traitor was the antithesis of everything she was. “But I need evidence. Handwriting samples. I have a few names in mind, but I won’t strike until I’m certain. No proof, no chance in hell of winning.”
Will nodded, a slow, solemn movement. “Okay. Get your samples. I’ll keep Cal from doing anything reckless.”
“Reckless?” Gwen’s brow furrowed. “I won’t tolerate vigilantism, Clark. I am still the Community Service Chair.”
Will let out a short, surprised laugh, the sound bright in the dark archway. “Oh, believe me, Princess, no one’s forgetting that.” He looked at her, his expression turning serious again. “Why tell me? Why trust me with this?”
A renewed flush crept up her neck. She didn’t want to tell him the truth—that she had an irrational compulsion that made her want to. She fell back on the only logic her upbringing allowed.
“You’re the Chosen One, Clark,” she said with practiced indifference. “It’s your destiny to fight corrupt sorcerers. You make a sensible, predictable ally for a mission like this. It’s good practice for your hero’s journey.”
The warmth in Will’s eyes vanished, replaced by a dull, aching disappointment. He slumped against the wall, his shoulders dropping. “Right. The prophecy. Because I’m a useful weapon for your investigation, not because you actually trust me.”
Gwen flinched. She wanted to reach out, to tell him it wasn’t just that, but the words felt too dangerous to speak. “I’m trusting you because… I suspect you have a reliable moral centre.”
Will huffed a dry, hollow laugh. “Am I your Jiminy Cricket?”
“I don’t know who that is,” Gwen said bluntly. She didn’t care to learn a normie reference.
“Will, one minute!” Bryn shouted from the end of the corridor.
Gwen stepped out from the archway, adjusting her mask of cool perfection, though her skin still hummed from his proximity. “I’ll update you when I have something,” she said.
As she strode away toward the Linguistics lecture, the nausea that had plagued her all night had vanished, replaced by a cold, steady certainty. She felt his gaze on her back—a heavy, complicated weight. This was the right choice. She would uphold the Circle’s legacy by rooting out the poison within it. She would prove to the school, to the Circle, and most of all to her hard-won ally, that she was no one’s puppet.
***
The remaining weekdays were a slow-motion shipwreck, the morale of Cairn-Gait splintering against the jagged rocks of a new, foreboding reality. The campus hummed with a daunting frequency that made Gwen’s teeth ache; the usual sounds of shuffling paper and hushed chants of Latin and Gaelic were replaced by a discordant chorus of protesters and the sudden, unnerving cracks of defensive charms tested in the corridors.
Underneath the overt noise, a more insidious symphony had begun. In the shadowed cloisters. Inks had taken to weaving minor illusion charms—the faint, rhythmic clop-clop-clop of phantom hooves echoing on cold stone, always just a few paces behind any Vapour walking alone. When the terrified student spun around, there was nothing but the empty, vaulted hallway and the mocking smirk of a passing Ink upperclassman.
Leading this psychological siege was Oliver Anderson, a boy who had traded his academic ambition for a sharp, cruel kind of political theatre. He stood at the centre of a clique of extremist Inks, his presence bolstered by the suspiciously supportive Catriona Sinclair. They had abandoned the traditional Aurelian gold for something new: silver badges with a deceptively minimalist horse’s head.
The sleek equestrian design had no Rider, and that was just enough to make the guilty wearers innocent in the eyes of the Circle.
Gwen’s decision to double the prefect patrols was like trying to patch a breached hull with lace. The failure was one of integrity, not numbers. While prefects like Julian Vane took assigned patrols seriously, actively confronting anyone caught mimicking the Dullahan’s approach, others simply looked away. They shrugged as the phantom hooves chased a sobbing first-year into the library.
“No one got hurt,” they’d tell Gwen. “Practicing sensory illusions is part of the Vespertine syllabus,” they’d say. As long as no one was physically in danger, and no personal property was damaged, no rules were broken.
This selective enforcement was a rot of its own, turning the Circle’s badge from a symbol of order into a mask for cowards.
Gwen’s mind was a frantic loom, discreetly weaving together threads of suspicion she wasn’t yet ready to wear. She wasn’t just observing; she was hunting. In her pocket, the folded Red Letter was a constant, heavy reminder. She had memorized the texture of that cream-laid vellum, the exact geometry of the blind-debossed Ouroboros seal in the corner, and the shape of every cursive word.
She prioritized her targets with a tactician’s coldness. First: the least sympathetic to Vapours.
During a morning Circle briefing, she tried to corner Alistair Thorne. “The badges are a provocation, Alistair. It’s weaponizing the Dullahan tragedy. Behaviour like this is beneath us. I need you to sign this directive to ban unauthorized political iconography.” She slid a sheet toward him, hoping to catch the flow of his script under the guise of bureaucracy.
Alistair didn’t even look up. He scrawled dismissive suggestions for revisions at the bottom of her form. “Don’t be so sensitive, Gwenhwyfar; it’s practically a mascot at this point. We can’t ban every badge someone finds offensive. We’d have to ban the Circle pin.”
Gwen pocketed the revisions he’d penned. The ‘A’ was sharp, but the lowercase was too wide to match the Red Letters.
Next was Catriona Sinclair at the Sanctuary. The Fundraising Chair was holding court near the fireplace, her laugh sounding like shattering glass.
“Catriona, I’m drafting a note of reassurance to donors who might be spooked by the ‘Vapour problem,’” Gwen lied. “Could you jot down the names of any families I should be particularly mindful of?”
Catriona paused, her eyes flickering with a moment of sharp, wary calculation. She took the pen and wrote three names in a flowery, practiced hand. Gwen watched the way she crossed her Ts—flat, horizontal strokes. Not the duellist’s parry. Another dead end.
Finally, she sought out Isolde Thorne. Obtaining an indisputable sample of her mentor’s handwriting was proving to be an exercise in tactical exhaustion. Their meeting was a masterclass in subtext. Isolde hadn’t just lectured Gwen; she had circled her like a predator sensing a tremor in the herd.
“Leniency is a slow-acting poison, Gwenhwyfar,” Isolde purred, her fingers tracing the gold-leaf edge of a heavy grimoire. What started as a veiled lesson about the cons of losing focus during a crisis shifted to a sharp reminder of what Gwen’s focus ought to be. “You’re looking for reasonable motivations from people who are without reason. Give the Inks the justice they crave, and they’ll stop being petty.”
Gwen tried her ultimate trap. She presented a blank sheet of the high-grade Circle vellum she’d borrowed from the Secretary’s office. “The Red Letter misquoted the First Rule. It’s a blasphemy against the founders’ mission. Could you write out the correct version for the investigation? The black ink of the oath outlasts the clear water of the well. Your elegant script deserves to be the standard for the official rebuttal.”
Isolde only smiled—a sharp, curious tilt of the lips that made Gwen’s skin prickle. She didn’t take the pen. “If you find the quote so haunting, Gwen, write it yourself. Perhaps the repetition will remind you where your loyalty should be.”
Gwen left the Circle Sanctuary empty-handed, the weight of her failure hot in her chest. She had narrowed her primary suspects, but they were too clever to leave a trail. Perhaps it was time to move to the secondary list: Heather Stewart, the Secretary whose notes were everywhere, or Clooney, whose history of rebellion made him a challenge.
She was a hunter who had lost the scent. With no evidence, only instinct, it wasn’t enough to bring to Chancellor Eddow. Not without being laughed out of his office or called a traitor herself.
The campus was drowning. At every turn, Vapours stood in defiant clusters, brandishing handmade placards of rough cardboard that looked like scars against the elegant gothic architecture. They haunted the Duelling Club and the Cryptid Society meetings, their voices a raw, discordant chorus demanding an end to ‘Ink Injustice.’
Gwen had played her part in the theatre of bureaucracy. She reviewed patrol reports, communicated her concerns to the Chancellor, and stood stoically as the dorm leaders delivered hopeless speeches urging the Red Letter author to turn themselves in. She had done everything by the book. It did nothing to speed up her progress.
Now, she found herself in the chilled wooden stands of the Fen-Ball field, the late September wind whipping her silver-blonde hair into a frizzy halo. She was supposed to be an unbiased observer, her notebook open to record Will’s tactical spell-casting. Instead, her gaze kept snagging on the protesters on the sidelines.
The freckled shouter and the fuchsia-zapping caster from the Equinox Social. The pair of Vapour agitators had become the faces of the unrest. Their cardboard signs and slant-rhymed chants were obnoxious, yes, but Gwen noted with a prickle of irritation that they hadn’t broken a single rule since the riot. Chancellor Eddow’s punishment—a month-long ban from social events—had been a measured, diplomatic stroke.
She looked down at the field, her eyes instinctively finding Will. He was a gathering storm trapped in a practice jersey, his raw power surging through every play. When he mimicked Cal’s go-to manoeuvres—shaking the earth or slicking the grass with ice—his abyssal reserves turned subtle tactics into seismic events, sometimes sending the iron ball careening into the stands.
During one scrimmage, a particularly overpowered redirection spell sent Oliver Anderson—sporting his silver horse-head badge even on his athletic gear—sliding face-first into a slurry of mud.
The Vapours erupted in cheers. Oliver scrambled up, his face a mask of pure, murderous hatred as he wiped sludge from his eyes.
But Will didn’t join the celebration. He stood dead centre on the field, his chest heaving, studying his obsidian-and-tiger’s-eye bracelet with a rigidness in his jaw and shoulders that Gwen recognized all too well. He wanted control; he was getting chaos.
They had barely spoken since she’d confessed her resolve to find evidence. Their tutoring sessions had calcified into a series of heavy, airless pauses. He didn’t demand updates on her investigation. He didn’t even ask. He simply waited. Watching for her to keep her word. It was the gravity of that expectation—quiet, constant, and devastating—that made Gwen’s neck ache. And also very likely why she’d developed a maddening on-and-off eye twitch.
Her hunt for evidence was about more than saving the Circle. Selfishly, she wanted to find proof so she didn’t have to see that look of disappointment in his eyes again. As an O’Dorchaidhe, she was accustomed to being feared or envied. But she was entirely unprepared for the agony of being found wanting by a boy who valued goodness over greatness.
Gwen outlined a series of precise suggestions for resonance flow reduction in her notebook. She would send them via a messenger spell later. Lately, it’d been easier to communicate in written words. Ink didn’t stutter, and paper didn’t have to look him in the eye and admit she was sinking under the very weight she’d demanded to carry.
She would find the proof. She would salvage the Circle’s reputation. And she would prove to Will Clark that some legacies were worth saving. Even if she had to replace every rotted plank and nail on Theseus’ ship until nothing of the original remained but the ghost of its intent.